Superdreadnought- The Complete Series

by C H Gideon

  It sputtered and spewed smoke from rear pipes, then shot off across the rough, raw terrain.

  “Fucking wonderful,” she muttered. “Where’s a damn Jonny-Taxi when you need one?”

  “I should probably call Reynolds,” she joked, starting off after the vehicle, using the resources of her powered armor to keep pace so she didn’t lose sight of her target.

  “Had I known you were going for a jog, I’d have gone with the damn android,” Ka’nak told her over the comm.

  She glanced back over her shoulder to see the Melowi warrior running behind her. She slowed a little so he could catch up.

  “What the hell are you doing out here?” he asked.

  “Chasing bad guys. You?”

  “Chasing you, apparently,” he told her.

  “How’d you find me out here?” she asked.

  “I was coming back to figure out where you and Geroux were when you strolled right in front of me,” he said. “Lost you for a second when you slipped between some houses, but then caught a flicker of the barrier being penetrated. Figured that was you. Guess I was right. Unfortunately. Now here I am.”

  “You’ve got good timing,” she told him.

  “Not from where I’m standing…er, running,” he shot back. “Where’s Geroux?”

  “She’s keeping an eye on the emperor’s sister. We followed her to an estate in a fancy part of town, and then the cultist in that vehicle we’re tracking showed up.”

  “So, there are cultists here, huh?”

  “Looks that way,” she replied. “What happened with Reynolds and the others?”

  The two continued to run until the vehicle slowed and eased down a decline. It vanished, but with the dust it was kicking up in its wake, it was easy to follow.

  “The planet’s on its last legs, according to the emperor,” Ka’nak informed her. “Some supposed alien menace has claimed their mining planet, which is why they were skimming the asteroids, which are what’s left of one of the system’s other planets.”

  “And Reynolds decided to help,” Asya said, not even bothering to make it a question.

  “Yup, and he sent me to back you and the kid up while we wait for them to finish being heroes and come back to get us.”

  “When’s that going to be?” she asked.

  He shrugged, which looked quite awkward while running.

  “Soon as they’re done. Whenever that is.”

  The pair came up to the rise the vehicle had descended and Asya stuttered to a stop, sticking her arm out. Ka’nak stumbled into her extended limb and grunted as she kept him from tumbling off a sharp drop.

  Asya dropped to her haunches and stared out across the distance, where the vehicle had also come to a halt. Ka’nak crouched beside her.

  “Thanks,” he muttered, and she nodded in response.

  The cultist and his entourage climbed out of the vehicle outside a short, squat building that reminded Asya of a church of some kind. Built in one of the deep ravines, and made out of the same rock as its surroundings, she imagined the place would be difficult to spot from the air unless someone was right over it.

  “What kind of moron builds a church out in the middle of fucking nowhere?” Ka’nak snarled.

  “Cultists,” she replied.

  He shrugged at the answer. “Makes sense, I guess.”

  “Still, you’d think someone would have noticed these guys cutting through the barrier at some point and reported this?”

  “I try not to think on an empty stomach,” Ka’nak informed her, rubbing his belly.

  “I wonder how long this has been out here?” she questioned as the cultist and his followers pushed through the door and went inside.

  “Maybe a couple of years, at the most,” Ka’nak replied. He gestured to the roof of the small building, and Asya zoomed in where he pointed. “You see those cuts across the top there?”

  She nodded.

  “Those are fresh,” he said. “You can still see the raw stone underneath where they cut into it to shape the roof. Had it been out here in this nasty weather a long time, those marks would be worn smooth. You wouldn’t be able to see the tool strokes.”

  “A couple of years is still a long time,” she remarked.

  “If they’re out here all the time.” The Melowi waved his hand at the sullen, ugly landscape. “I doubt even these guys spend much time in this dump. I’m sure none of the locals do. At least those not connected to these cult fuckers.”

  Asya realized he was right.

  This was the perfect place to hide…

  As long as you don’t mind being irradiated and having your skin lashed from your bones by the wind.

  “I wonder what they’re doing in there,” Asya said.

  She hated that she couldn’t see or hear anything that was going on because they were so far from the church, relying on their advanced optics to keep the place in view.

  “Let’s take a closer look,” she told Ka’nak.

  “I was afraid you’d say that.” He sighed as he got to his feet. “I’m with you, but I’m not running this time.”

  She chuckled and started off, walking down the same path the vehicle had taken. With sufficient cover to keep them hidden the rest of the way to the church, Asya was glad to slow down. They could get next to it and never once step out into the open.

  That was the easy part.

  Deciding what to do once they were there was something else entirely.

  Geroux cracked the cult house’s security not more than a few minutes after she’d identified what they were using to keep her out.

  It was a simple firewall designed to keep the communications and energy signature of the estate hidden from the neighbors, but Geroux couldn’t for the life of her figure out why they needed it.

  It wasn’t like Muultar was high-tech enough for anyone to notice the firewall, let alone have the skill to identify or bypass it.

  Once Geroux was through the defenses, she realized quickly that the device the emperor’s sister was working on was the only one within the range of Geroux’s own device.

  She went after it with gusto, only to hit a wall.

  Geroux growled low in her throat as a new line of defenses popped up when she tried to hack the device.

  It was nothing like the firewall.

  The technology of the computer was sophisticated and alien, and Geroux struggled against its security.

  She peered in through the window, still cloaked and undetectable, and was glad that it was the device that shouldered the whole of the defenses and not Aht Gow. The emperor’s sister was ignorant of the device’s innate abilities as she worked, oblivious to Geroux’s efforts to crack into the computer she was using.

  Geroux bared her teeth as she worked, pecking at her wrist console, racing to get past the automated security.

  She tried code-cracker after code-cracker, working to identify and break into the device. The entire time, the emperor’s sister tapped at her keyboard at a leisurely pace.

  As Geroux split her focus between Aht Gow and her computer, she saw the Muultu tap one last key and sit back in her chair.

  When Geroux’s scanners picked up and identified a surge of energy, she realized the emperor’s sister was sending some kind of coded message.

  Geroux snatched up the signal and recorded it. Out in the open, she had no issue corralling it, although she could neither stop it nor decrypt it at that point. She’d have to settle for being able to examine it after the fact and hoping it wasn’t some sort of signal to set something in motion.

  While her computer continued to record the encrypted message, she worked at hacking the device. Its security ebbed and flowed with her efforts, and she was nearly ready to quit when a snippet of code ran across her screen.

  She gasped, recognizing the string as the signal cut away.

  It was the same coding language the Loranian ship had used to gain control of Gorad’s ships, using them to attack the SD Reynolds.

  “Oh,
hell,” she muttered.

  There was no way she would be able to crack the device before the emperor’s sister shut it down, if at all. The code had eluded even Reynolds when he’d first encountered it, and she didn’t think he’d broken its secrets yet.

  But it didn’t matter right that second.

  Just seeing the code had made it clear that Aht Gow was connected to Jora’nal and the Phraim-‘Eh cult.

  Geroux stiffened.

  “Shit!”

  She triggered her comm and reached out to Asya.

  “Everything okay?” Asya said a few moments later.

  “Not really,” Geroux told her. “Krol Gow’s sister sent out a coded message of some kind.”

  “To whom?” Asya asked.

  Geroux shrugged. “Hell if I know, but it uses the same encryption as the code Jora’nal used to hack Gorad’s systems. She shot the stream into space.”

  “That can’t be good.”

  “My thought exactly,” Geroux told her.

  As she waited for Asya to respond, Aht Gow closed the device and stood up. She slipped it under her belt, wrapped her scarf around her head, and left the room.

  “Damn it,” Geroux growled. “She’s on the move again.”

  “Stay with her,” Asya said.

  “On it.”

  Geroux climbed to her feet and steadied herself on top of the wall. She then made her way back around to the courtyard behind the house as the emperor’s sister exited. She headed for the door that led back to the tiny alley.

  Geroux beat her there and slithered down the wall at the same time Aht Gow opened the gate, covering the sound of Geroux’s descent.

  She followed the female out of the alley and back onto the streets, where she started off again at the casual pace she had adopted on the way there.

  Geroux let her get a short distance ahead so she could speak to Asya without being paranoid that Aht Gow could hear her voice, even though she knew the sound didn’t travel outside the helmet.

  “She’s heading back to the palace, it looks like,” Geroux reported. “We’re following the same path back.”

  “Uh, you didn’t happen to catch what that message said, did you?” Asya asked a moment later.

  “I can’t be sure because I couldn’t crack the code, but I have to assume she was reporting our presence here to someone and calling for help, or maybe warning someone off. Neither of those helps us.”

  “She was signaling someone,” Asya said after a few seconds pause.

  Geroux made a face. “How do you know?” she asked.

  “Because an alien ship is coming down right on top of us.”

  “This can’t be good,” Ka’nak complained as he spotted the strange alien craft streaking through the hazy air.

  It came about and dropped down less than five meters away, landing gear thumping on the dusty ground. Its hatch opened as the ship settled, and the strangest lifeforms Asya had ever seen emerged from the ship.

  “What the fuck are those?” she asked, nearly choking on the words.

  The creatures were amorphous blobs of energy that floated out of the ship on what appeared to be tendrils of lightning. They had no discernable features of any kind—no eyes, no ears, nose, or mouth. Nor did they have any limbs.

  Their transparent gelatinous forms shimmered and changed shape without rhyme or reason. It looked as if they had nuclear generators inside them, sparks of energy rippling away from a glowing blue core.

  The creatures floated above the rough terrain, kicking up tiny clouds of dust everywhere their energy tendrils touched. They appeared to glance around, or at least that was the impression Asya got from their movements.

  It wasn’t like she could tell what they were doing.

  She was just glad to be cloaked and out of sight.

  Then one of the aliens turned in what she believed was their direction, and she had the strange feeling that it had seen them.

  “Fuck,” she growled. “Run!”

  “Why?” Ka’nak asked. “It’s not like they—”

  A glowing bolt of bluish lightning streaked across the intervening space and slammed into Ka’nak.

  He shrieked and flew backward, crashing against the rocky wall behind him, kicking up a storm or reddish dust.

  His eyes were wide behind the visor. He groaned, trying to focus and clear his head.

  Asya ducked another of the bolts and raced to his side, scooping him up and dragging him to his feet.

  “We are so fucked,” he muttered.

  Asya couldn’t agree more.

  The pair of them hobbled off, but she could hear the creatures coming after them. The ground crackled at their passage, and they were coming fast—much faster than she could move dragging the stunned Melowi.

  She looked for a place to hide but realized it was useless. Despite the blow to Ka’nak, he was still cloaked, as was she, yet the aliens had known exactly where they were.

  Finding a rock to cower behind wasn’t going to help any.

  Neither was running.

  “We have to fight,” she told the warrior.

  He nodded and pulled away from her, but he still wobbled on his feet.

  There was nothing she could do for him, so she pulled out her weapons and eased down behind a small boulder while he struggled to do the same.

  She triggered her comm and reached out to Geroux.

  “Looks like we’re not going to make it,” she told the young tech, sending along the video of what her visor was currently seeing. “Whatever these creatures are, they can see past our cloaks.”

  “I’m on my way,” Geroux shouted, desperation in her voice.

  “No,” Asya screamed back. The last thing she wanted was for Geroux to suffer the same fate as her and Ka’nak. “Stay with Aht Gow, and stay the hell out of sight. You need to warn Reynolds and the others when they return.”

  “But I can—” Geroux started, but Asya cut her off as the alien floated over the rock she was hiding behind.

  “No, you can’t do shit for us. Stay put! That’s an order,” Asya snarled as she backed away, raising her weapon.

  Another of the aliens went at Ka’nak as he lashed out at it. There was a brilliant flash, and the Melowi warrior stumbled and fell face-first to the ground, his weapon jarred from his hands. It hit the dirt.

  Asya pulled the trigger, the sound of her weapon drowning out whatever Geroux had shouted over the comm.

  Her blast slammed into the alien, distorting its gelatinous body and twisting it sideways. And for the briefest of instants, Asya believed she had a chance.

  Then the creature shrugged off the blast and ejected streams of blue lightning to engulf her.

  She felt a sharp, agonizing pain as her nerves were short-circuited. She dropped into a heap, unable to control her body.

  Fortunately, the pain only lasted a moment.

  Then the darkness came and swept her away.

  Geroux stifled a gasp as she heard Asya cry out, and her stomach churned as the images of her last few seconds played across her visor. Geroux stumbled, nearly toppling over, thinking Asya and Ka’nak dead.

  And then she spotted the strange alien leaning over the visor and appearing to look inside.

  Geroux realized that the suit was still relaying what was going on. Asya’s view jumped and twitched, and then rose into the air. The creature had picked the captain up, and she heard her moan at the motion.

  She was still alive.

  Asya was swung about, and Geroux caught a fleeting glimpse of Ka’nak. The Melowi struggled weakly in the grasp of his captor, although that was all she could make out as the screen shorted and went black.

  Geroux knew then that they had been captured, and her worry and fear metamorphosed into raging fury and the need to go after her friends.

  She glanced down the street at the still-retreating Aht Gow. The aliens’ arrival had something to do with the signal the female had sent.

  Of that, she had no doubt.

&nb
sp; As she stared after the emperor’s sister, an idea came to mind.

  If she wanted to rescue her friends, she knew what she needed to do.

  Chapter Ten

  The SD Reynolds drifted in space, directionless.

  Reynolds stood near Tactical’s post, staring at the viewscreen, parsing the data as it scrolled. Jiya had run off to oversee the care of the wounded in the med-bay, and Reynolds had stayed at his post to direct the repairs of the ship and coordinate from there.

  The bots were working tirelessly to patch the holes in the hull alongside a number of the crew, and XO scrambled to get the gravitic shields back to operational. He’d managed to pull some power from non-essential systems and get them back up, but they were currently running at twelve percent—enough to keep asteroid chunks from hitting, but not enough to stop a determined enemy.

  The weapon systems were still operational, but it had taken the ESD to destroy the alien superdreadnought. There was no way they could trigger the weapon now without blowing out all their systems and leaving them even more helpless than they already were.

  Outside of the Loranian ship, which had survived the weapon due to a systems error, he had never seen another ship take the ESD without being obliterated. That this alien craft had not been completely destroyed concerned him.

  He’d unloaded his greatest weapon on the enemy and was only able to kill one of them. And now two more were hunting him. The odds weren’t good.

  “Sitrep,” he requested.

  Various locations across the ship replied, updating him on the status of their operations. While the ship was badly damaged, it was still serviceable. It would take some time to repair it and return the SD Reynolds to its former glory, but it would survive.

  The same couldn’t be said for a number of the crew.

  At last report, thirty-two of his people had died, and several more lives hung in the balance, dependent on how quickly everyone could be stabilized and moved out of the Pod-docs to make room for others.

  The whole process was taking too much time, and Reynolds worried they’d lose more.